


in the place that's made of old relations

by orphan_account



Series: Ghost Granddad [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (soon to be drastically AU), Coming of Age, Family Bonding, Force Ghosts, Gen, Grandparents & Grandchildren, Menstruation, Speculation, Tatooine Slave Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 05:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5362802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Rey grows up alone on Jakku. Well, not completely alone.</p><p>It turns out her grandfather knows a thing or two about living in the desert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the place that's made of old relations

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Те, кто блуждает в пустыне](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6265363) by [Bonniemary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bonniemary/pseuds/Bonniemary)



> Written for the cruel, cruel anon on tumblr who left this in my inbox:
>
>> I’m having a lot of feels about Force ghost Anakin communicating to Rey while she’s left on Jakku (since she was 5??? Idk if that’s true???) and using the Tatooine religion you’ve talked a lot about to sort of help her and make her feel a little less alone (especially if she’s his granddaughter I feel like there would be some sort of familial obligation)  
> 
> 
> This will all be radically AU in two weeks, so enjoy it now I guess. I tried to write it so it would work whether Leia or Luke is her parent.
> 
> Warning for some frank discussion of menstruation (because can you just imagine how awful that would be, for a girl growing up alone - luckily her Granddad is from Tatooine, where they learn the facts of life young and have zero cultural taboos around talking about them).
> 
> Title is from Mirah's song _Bones & Skin_.

The first time she met him, Rey thought the world was ending.

She’d been out in the desert, exploring. Looking for…something. Someone. She didn’t know what she was looking for, really. She only knew that she had been here, alone with only BB-8, for _so long_.

So she’d left Bebe in the shelter, in case someone came while she was gone. That was the smart thing to do. It would be terrible, if she missed her parents coming back. And she took a comlink, so Bebe could contact her if they did. She told him this very sternly, and she knew he’d understood, because he’d sounded very annoyed when he beeped at her.

And then she’d gone out into the desert.

The sky was clear and brittle blue when she left, stretching endlessly above and around her. Rey had imagined, as she walked, that if she stepped lightly enough, she could fly right up into it.

But the sky wasn’t blue anymore. Now there was no sky at all. It had been swallowed up, eaten by the raging sand of the desert that snarled and slashed at her as if it wanted to eat her now, too.

She couldn’t see anything. The world had disappeared and everything now was brown, brown, brown. She tried to breathe and choked on sand. The wind whipped around her, lashing her with rending teeth, and she staggered and fell heavily on her knees.

She wanted to cry, but she already knew that would do no good. Her eyes were squeezed tight against the stinging sand, but she could still feel it whipping about her. She was alone in empty brown nothingness.

That was when she heard the voice in the whirlwind.

“Rey,” he said. “Rey, listen to me.”

“Who are you?” she tried to ask, but her words were stolen from her and her mouth filled with sand and she gagged.

“You’re going to be all right,” said the voice of the wind. It was deep and soothing, gentle, almost like she remembered her father’s. “Just follow me. I’ll lead you back. You’ll be just fine.”

 _I can’t see_ , she thought. _I can’t open my eyes. I can’t find you. How can I follow you?_

But she was already struggling to her feet. There was sand inside her shoes now, grating on her skin and scraping between her toes.

She still couldn’t see.

“You’re all right, Rey,” said the voice, so much softer than the rending wind, but she heard it as loud as her own heartbeat. “Just follow the sound of my voice. I’ll lead you back. You’re going to be all right.”

She stepped blindly toward the sound.

“That’s good,” he said. “Just keep following my voice. And cover your nose and mouth if you can. That’s right. Shallow breaths, don’t fight. That’s good. You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be all right, Rey.”

She followed the voice in the whirlwind. He never stopped talking, and sometimes he would say very strange words that sounded like nonsense to her, but she knew they were probably in a language she didn’t know. The world was still nothingness and howling, but she wasn’t as scared anymore.

She staggered on, until finally the voice said, “You’re at the shelter. Put your hand out. A little to the left. Up. Do you feel the door panel?”

She did, and she slapped at it desperately. She heard the door open, and a violent gust of sand, and she fell into the shelter, hacking and gasping, and the door closed behind her.

A strange silence fell. Around her, the walls of the shelter shook. And then BB-8 was there, trilling worriedly, and she could hear him but she couldn’t see him.

“Here,” said her guiding voice. “Let’s get you clean.”

He directed her to the small fresher in the shelter, and he told her how to flush her eyes and how to clear the sand from her face and her nose and her ears without hurting herself.

When she could see again she turned and looked at him.

He was tall, and his eyes were bright with mischief and worry, too. And he was older than her parents. She could tell. But something about the way he looked at her reminded her sharply of them. His smile made Rey want to smile back. So she did.

But the really strange thing was that he was all blue and she could see through him.

“Why are you blue?” she blurted.

The man bent down so they could look right at each other, and he chuckled. “I’m not blue at all,” he said. “I’m very happy to meet you.”

Rey giggled. “No, silly,” she said. “You’re all colored blue.”

“Ah,” he said, slow and exaggerated. He tapped the side of his nose and winked at her. “Well, that’s because I’m not really supposed to be here. But I’m breaking the rules.” He gave her a conspiratorial grin. “My name’s Anakin. I’m your grandfather.”

“Oh!” Rey gasped, beaming at him. “Are my parents coming, too?”

Her grandfather frowned. “I’m not sure they can, Rey.”

“But you’re here! Why aren’t they?”

This time her grandfather smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. It was one of those smiles adults used when they were trying to pretend they weren’t sad.

“It’s different for me,” he said. “Because I’m – well, I’m a spirit.”

Rey blinked. She knew what that meant. A spirit was like a ghost. So her grandfather was…dead. And she’d known that, of course. She should have remembered.

But she could see him and talk to him and he’d saved her from the world ending and he felt _right_ , somehow. Safe and good. And she liked having him here. She didn’t want him to leave.

But she knew he would.

“So when do you have to go?” she asked in a small voice.

Grandfather raised an eyebrow at her. “What?” he asked. “Tired of me already?”

“No!” Rey blurted, just a little too quickly. Now Grandfather was looking at her in a way that made her feel sad and happy all at once.

“I don’t have to leave at all, Rey,” he said gently. “Not forever, anyway. I will have to go, sometimes, but I’ll always come back, as long as you want me to. I promise.”

Rey bit her lip. “Won’t you get in trouble?” she asked. “You said you were breaking the rules.”

Grandfather threw his head back and laughed. Rey liked his laugh. It was big and warm and it made her feel like she was inside of a smile.

“That’s right,” he said. “But don’t worry. I decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to follow anybody else’s rules. No more masters for me. If I want to see you I will, and that’s that.”

Rey didn’t know what he meant about masters, but that part wasn’t the most important. Grandfather was breaking the rules for _her_. A little pocket of warmth opened inside her.

“Besides,” said Grandfather, “someone has to teach you how to live in the desert! You can’t just go out walking in sandstorms, you know.”

Rey scuffed her now bare feet along the sand-strewn floor. So that had been a sandstorm. She listened to the wind still howling around her little shelter and the pelting grains of sand against the walls, and she tasted the word on her tongue. Sandstorm. Maybe the world wasn’t ending, after all.

“I didn’t know it was going to storm,” Rey muttered, looking down and picking sand out of her nails.

“Of course you didn’t,” Grandfather said. He smiled at her. “I grew up in the desert too, you know. I can teach you how to know when storms are coming, and how to find your way in the desert, and the best ways to collect water, and even how to keep the sand mostly out of your face and off your skin.”

Rey stared up at him in amazement. “You can keep the sand out?”

“Well,” Grandfather said with an exaggerated grimace. “Not completely out. That’s impossible. The stuff gets absolutely _everywhere_.”

“I know,” said Rey mournfully. She’d cleaned all of her nails twice now and she could still feel the sand grating against the skin beneath them.

“But,” said Grandfather, “there are ways to keep it mostly out, and that’s better than the alternative.”

“Okay,” said Rey. She eyed him carefully. He didn’t _look_ like he was going anywhere. But she needed to be sure. And there was one way to test it.

Rey affected an enormous yawn. “But can you tell me tomorrow? I’m really tired, Grandfather.” Immediately after she said it she winced. That wasn’t right at all. “Ugh,” she said. “Can I call you Granddad instead?”

Her grandfather froze for a moment, some expression passing over his face that Rey didn’t fully understand. He looked…he looked like he’d just fallen down and was trying not to cry. But at the same time he looked like he’d just gotten the very best present in the entire galaxy. “Yes,” he said, very softly. “I’d like that very much.” And then he looked at her with a knowing twinkle in his eyes. “And I’ll still be here tomorrow, Rey. I promise.”

Rey decided that she would believe him tomorrow. But she was feeling pretty hopeful.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m going to sleep now. But…do you know any stories, Granddad?”

“Of course I do,” Granddad said warmly, already guiding Rey towards her sleeping room. The walls of the shelter were still shaking in the gusting winds, but Rey wasn’t afraid now, with Granddad here. She didn’t know why, but she was sure that he could make himself scarier than anything that might try to hurt her.

Rey snuggled up under her covers and closed her eyes, but not completely. BB-8 had followed them and now stood beeping and trilling nervously in the corner of her room. She didn’t think he could see Granddad. “It’s all right, Bebe,” she reassured him. “I’m safe now. And I won’t go out in a storm again.”

That seemed to calm Bebe, though he still looked determined to stand guard over her all night. She didn’t mind.

In the dark Granddad wasn’t just blue – he was actually glowing a bit. It was nice, Rey thought. Outside everything was brown nothingness, but Granddad brought the sky with him.

Now, though, Granddad looked strangely nervous. He twisted his glowing hands and kept checking to be sure Rey was settled and comfortable.

Finally she huffed in annoyance. “I thought you were going to tell me a story, Granddad.”

“Well I – ” He let out a breath that was half laugh and half sigh. “I’ve never actually told a bedtime story before.”

Rey considered this. Granddads told bedtime stories, she knew. But this was the first time she’d met her granddad. So it made sense that he hadn’t told a bedtime story before.

“That’s all right,” she said. “Just tell me your favorite.”

“All right,” said Granddad with a faint smile. He arranged himself on top of a storage crate near her bed, stretched out his long legs, and took a deep breath. “One day, Ekkreth was going along…”

*

Granddad didn’t come back the next day, but that was only because he never left at all. Rey was sure of that. She’d woken up several times in the night to check, and every time her room had been filled with his faint blue glow.

In the morning she went to make breakfast. Just for her, because Granddad didn’t eat the way she did. But he still had an awful lot of opinions.

His lip curled when he saw the ration packs she’d gathered for her breakfast. “That won’t do at all,” he said. “Don’t you have any real food?”

So she showed him the storage area. It was by far the largest part of her little shelter, and it was all filled up with boxes and boxes of rations, the kind that would last forever.

Granddad looked very unimpressed. “Well,” he said. “We’ll have to work with it, I suppose. I’ve managed with worse.”

He went sorting through the boxes. He took a long time with it, too – so long that Rey went ahead and made the breakfast she’d started, because she was hungry. But eventually Granddad called her into the storage room and had her collect several different boxes. There was one with preserved tubers, and another with some kind of soup mix, and two more that she couldn’t identify at all.

“I’m going to teach you how to cook,” said Granddad.

He looked almost excited about it, and his excitement was infectious. Rey gathered all of the boxes and trotted off to the little kitchen with Granddad at her heals.

“All right,” he told her, standing beside the cooker. Rey was next to him, standing on a crate so she could reach. “The first rule of cooking is that there are no rules…”

*

The first time she tried to hug Granddad, Rey went right through him.

It felt very strange, almost like she had touched a live wire, except that it didn’t hurt. She looked up at him from where she’d fallen on the floor and pouted.

Granddad laughed at her. “Sorry about that,” he said. “You caught me by surprise.” His eyes tightened in concentration, and after a moment he smiled. “All right. Let’s try that again.”

This time when she went to hug him, Rey was much more cautious. But she didn’t have to worry. He’d bent down a bit, so he wouldn’t tower so much above her, and this time her arms closed around his waist and she felt his arms wrap around her shoulders.

The feeling was still strange. It wasn’t quite like she remembered hugging her parents had been. Granddad was warm, and solid, but not the way her parents had been solid. He felt like…like solid light. Her whole body buzzed with energy.

He was the first person, other than Bebe, that she’d touched in months. When the tears came, she tried to hide them, but Granddad picked her up in his arms and held her like she was still a little girl, and then Rey couldn’t hold it back anymore. She cried into his shoulder, and Granddad held her and patted her back and sang to her softly in that language she couldn’t understand until she fell asleep.

*

The first time Granddad left, Rey held herself very still and kept the smile on her face for a good five minutes after he’d disappeared. And he really did disappear. One moment he was there, and the next he…wasn’t.

He said he was coming back, but she knew better.

Bebe beeped a question at her, butting up against her legs in an offer of comfort, though she knew he didn’t really understand why she was sad. He’d never been able to see Granddad, or read him with any of his sensors, and she was sure the droid believed Rey had been talking to the air for the past several days. He was worried about her.

After a few days with no Granddad, she was starting to wonder if Bebe wasn’t right.

But she couldn’t have imagined him. She couldn’t. Rey told herself this, both silently and aloud, as she balanced on top of the crate and stirred a pot of mixed rations on the cooker. It smelled…well, not exactly good.

Granddad had said there were no rules in cooking, but Rey thought maybe there should be, if this was the kind of thing she ended up with.

Bebe directed a rude-sounding splat at her, and Rey scrunched up her nose and scowled at him. “Oh hush,” she said, placing her hands on her hips the way her mother used to do. “It doesn’t smell _that_ bad.” The spoon, still clasped in her right hand, dripped foul-smelling mush onto the floor.

“It really does, though,” said Granddad.

Rey jumped, the spoon falling from her grip and the crate skidding away beneath her. He was quite suddenly there, standing just beside Bebe and laughing at her.

Later she might be mad at him for insulting her cooking. But for now she launched herself at him, so fast that he barely had time to solidify. “Granddad! You came back!”

“Of course I did,” Granddad said, his warm, glowing fingers brushing away the tears Rey hadn’t even been aware of. “I promised I would. I just had to recharge for a bit.”

That was what he’d said right before he disappeared, but Rey hadn’t asked what he meant then, because she’d been certain she knew. Only now he _had_ come back, and she wasn’t so sure anymore. “Recharge? You mean like Bebe does?”

“Very much like that, yes,” Granddad said with a grin. “It takes a lot of energy to remain in this world. So sometimes I have to go and recharge.”

Rey considered this. It made sense, she supposed. And Granddad had said he was breaking the rules.

She bit her lip. She didn’t _want_ to ask the question…but she needed to. “ _Are_ you in trouble, Granddad?” she said, her voice very small. “For visiting so often? Because I can take care of myself. You don’t have to – ”

“Don’t be silly,” Granddad said easily. “Recharging isn’t a punishment. Just ask Bebe.” He grinned at her. “And besides, I told you. I want to be here. I’ll only leave if you want me to.”

“I don’t,” Rey said with a sniffle. “I don’t want you to leave, Granddad.”

“Well then I won’t,” he said, as if it really was that easy, and for the first time, Rey believed him.

*

She’d been right about Bebe not being able to see Granddad. Rey told the droid about him, and she relayed almost everything Granddad said, but she didn’t think Bebe quite believed her. Not until Granddad taught her how to fix Bebe’s malfunctioning photoreceptor.

Rey had always loved all things mechanical, but especially droids. And Bebe was her oldest friend. He’d always been with her. So of course she wanted to help him.

But she didn’t know how, and Bebe knew that she didn’t know how. So he was naturally skeptical when she suddenly said she knew what to do now.

“It’s okay, Bebe,” Rey said, brushing a hand over his casing. “Granddad’s here to help me, and he knows _everything_ about fixing things.” She made this sound very impressive, because it was. Beside her, Granddad smiled almost shyly.

Bebe let out a series of rather severe beeps, and Rey glared at him. “Bebe! Don’t be rude.”

A definitive splat was her answer.

Granddad chuckled. “Don’t get too mad at him, Rey,” he said. “Would you trust a stranger with your photoreceptors?”

Rey giggled. Granddad talked like that sometimes, using droid-words for people-things, and sometimes the other way around. She liked that. It meant that she and Bebe weren’t so very different.

“Okay, Bebe,” she told the droid. “I promise this will help. I know what I’m doing, and Granddad’s going to help me, too. You’ll be fine. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”

Bebe rolled back and forth, whirring in indecision, but finally he stopped just in front of her and gave her an affirmative bleep.

Granddad walked her through the process step by step, explaining everything as they worked. When they were done, Bebe had a working photoreceptor and a brand new belief in things he couldn’t see.

After that, he never doubted Rey when she relayed Granddad’s words to him. He even started talking to Granddad himself sometimes, and he always called him The Mechanic, as if that were the highest compliment possible.

*

Over the next several months, Granddad taught Rey how to wrap her arms and legs and head before going out in the desert (and it _did_ keep out most of the sand, though not all of it), how to cook meals from her ration boxes that actually tasted pretty good, how to fix the vaporators when they started acting up, how to find fresh edible food from the sparse desert plants growing near her shelter, and how to spot the signs of a sandstorm long before it began.

He also told her all sorts of stories. There was a new one every night, and he never seemed to run out. Sometimes they were stories about the trickster Ekkreth and the endless ways they fooled Depur, and sometimes they were tales of clever girls who rescued their friends and talked with dragons and saved whole worlds from evil men who wanted to make themselves masters. (Masters, Rey learned from the stories, were the very worst sort of people. She remembered her parents telling her, once, about slavery and how evil it was. They’d never said that Granddad had been a slave, and he never said it either, but Rey was very good at picking up clues.)

All the names in the stories meant something, in Granddad’s language. Rey liked the sound of the names, and she liked their meanings even more, so on her seventh birthday, she asked Granddad if he would teach her his language.

Rey remembered that her parents spoke several other languages, but she only spoke Basic. Granddad said that his language was a secret, but that he could teach her, because she was his granddaughter. Rey nodded eagerly and promised that she wouldn’t share the secret with anybody. She’d never been part of an important secret before.

Granddad’s name was Anakin, but he said it differently in Amatakka. Ahnakeen. It almost seemed to roll. Rey liked the sound, and she liked the meaning, too. The one who brings the rain. Once she asked him, teasingly, if he couldn’t bring her some rain. It had been months since she’d seen a drop.

“Is my name Amatakka, Granddad?” Rey asked him once.

“Well,” he said. “I’m not sure, Rey. It could be. But your name exists in a lot of other languages, too. I’m not sure which your parents named you for.”

Rey thought about this. It had been three years since she’d seen her parents now. They couldn’t appear and disappear at will, the way Granddad did, so that meant they must still be alive. Most of the time, Rey was happy about that. But sometimes she wished…

“I think it’s Amatakka,” she insisted. “Even if it wasn’t at first, it is now. So what does it mean in Amatakka?”

Granddad gave her one of his sad smiles. “Why don’t you tell me?” he asked her, speaking in Amatakka himself.

Rey chewed her lip. “It’s an old name, isn’t it?”

“Very old,” Granddad said, his smile more real this time. “As old as the desert itself.”

 _Rey_ , she thought. _Rey, reya, riyal._ “It’s…something about roads? Traveling?”

Granddad laughed. “That’s right. Rey is the wanderer, the one who journeys.”

“The one who wanders in the desert,” Rey said with a sigh. “But where is she wandering to?”

“Well now,” said Granddad. “There’s a story.”

Rey looked up at him. He had that sparkle in his eyes that said this was one of his very favorite stories, and that it was going to be a long one. Those were Rey’s favorites, too.

She’d made a comfortable enough couch out of several padded packaging containers and a nest of old blankets. Now she curled up in it and sat back with a grin.

“Once, a very long time ago,” said Granddad, “there was a girl named Rey, and she was a slave. But all her life, Rey had had dreams, strange dreams of water flowing from rocks and green things blooming in the desert. And though she didn’t yet know it, it was the voice of Ar-Amu calling to her…”

*

Five days after her eighth birthday, Rey found the wreck.

It was huge – an immensity of a ship, bigger than anything she ever could have imagined. It was the biggest thing she’d ever seen, aside from the desert itself. But the desert was infinite – so vast that it became not a thing at all, but the void of space in which all other things existed, birthed by the desert and fading again into the desert when their time was done.

And now there was this wreck, a towering heap of a ship half-buried on its side in the sand.

Beside her, Granddad looked up at the hulking ruin and smiled. “Behold the strength of Depur,” he said wryly. “And all his glorious might displayed.”

The wind picked up around them, sand sighing forlornly through the jagged remains of old metal, but beneath lay the silence of the desert. On her other side, BB-8 let out a low, mournful whistle.

“What is it, Granddad?” Rey whispered.

“A Star Destroyer,” he said, his smile gentling at her look of alarm. “That’s the ship class.” And then he laughed. “Though really, the name of the ship itself isn’t much better.”

Rey looked up at the monstrous bulk of the ship, and then at Granddad, who looked oddly sheepish.

“I know this ship,” he said. “It’s the _Ravager_. Captain Eloris Daric.” He snorted. “I’m not at all surprised to see he crashed.”

Rey wasn’t paying much attention to that, though. She was staring up at Granddad in awe. “You mean – did you used to fly ships like this, Granddad?”

Again there was that strange grimace. “Well, not so much _fly_ ,” said Granddad. “I commanded them.”

Rey gaped at him, and Granddad stood there, his eyes shifting away from hers, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. She didn’t understand why he seemed so uncomfortable.

“Come on,” said Granddad at last. “I’ll show you around. But watch your step! This place doesn’t look very stable.”

Rey grinned, only just managing to keep herself from jumping up in excitement. A real adventure! “I’ll be careful, Granddad!” she said, scampering eagerly up the twisted remains of the ship and toward the large hole in the hull, Bebe following behind and keeping up a steady stream of worried beeping.

Granddad laughed. “Sure you will, _akku_ ,” he said, and a sudden gust of wind ruffled her hair, even though the desert outside was now completely still.

Inside, the wreck was a cavernous mouth of shadows and groaning, sagging metal. It looked almost like it had been hollowed out by some enormous hand, its innards scooped out and only the rotting shell remaining, with here and there scattered bits of scrap and the desiccated remains of old machinery.

“Wow,” Rey whispered, and her voice echoed and bounced back to her from every shadowed corner.

Granddad chuckled. “Wow is right,” he said, turning to grin at her. “There’s a treasure trove in here!”

His voice, Rey noticed, didn’t echo.

BB-8 had apparently forgotten his nerves and was already rolling eagerly toward one of the larger piles of scrap. Granddad looked nearly as excited, and Rey quickly realized why.

The jumbled heap of metal and plastic had once been some kind of speeder. It was too damaged now for Rey to guess what kind, and she’d only ever seen pictures in her info logs, anyway. But she recognized the engine. It was – 

“An S-17 dual core racing engine,” Granddad breathed. He sounded almost reverent.

Rey ran her fingers over the pitted casing. The engine itself was almost completely intact, but the body of the speeder would be unsalvageable. And she couldn’t do much with just an engine, no matter how good an engine it was.

“It’ll never run,” she sighed.

“Not in that scrap heap it won’t,” Granddad said easily. “But we’re not going to leave it there. Not a beauty like that.” He glanced around the hollow, echoing hangar, eyeing the other piles of broken machinery and nodding to himself in a distinctly pleased way. “Should definitely have enough to work with,” he muttered, mostly to himself. But then he looked up from the engine block and shot Rey a mischievous grin. “I’ll bet we can build the most wizard speeder this side of a Mos Espa racing pit. What do you say?”

Rey beamed at him, already drawing up schematics in her mind’s eye. “Let’s do it!”

*

The speeder took nearly a year to complete.

Rey did all of the work herself, though Granddad gave her tips and advice when she asked, and sometimes when she didn’t. The engine had only required a little tweaking to get back in working order, and there was more than enough scrap metal available to build the frames for an entire fleet of speeders. The wiring was a bit trickier; everything in the wreck was years old, and it had been exposed to the elements, and sometimes to the scavenging habits of the local rodents, for too long.

Rey gave herself a bit of a shock once, trying to salvage a length of wire she should have simply scrapped. It didn’t hurt _too_ badly; the tingling that remained in her arm after the fact was almost worse than the shock itself. But it was Granddad’s reaction that stayed with her longest.

The wire sparked, and Rey yelped. And then she was several feet away, and Granddad was between her and the wire, his hands still raised as if to ward off an attack.

For a long moment neither of them moved. Rey’s hand tingled, and then ached.

“Granddad?” she whispered.

Slowly, very slowly, she watched the tension drain out of him. When he turned to look at her, there was something almost like fear in his eyes.

“I’m all right,” Rey said softly. “It doesn’t even hurt much.”

“I’m…glad,” said Granddad, but he sounded very strange.

Rey rubbed at the back of her neck and scuffed one foot over the uneven surface of what passed for the floor of the wrecked ship. “We can take a break, if you want,” she said.

Granddad sighed. “Maybe we should,” he said. “I need to tell you a story.”

*

Before, all of Granddad’s stories had been about tricksters and clever young girls and the Great Mother of the Desert. But this story was different.

He still told it in what Rey thought of as his storyteller voice, but he didn’t look at her as he spoke. He’d always looked older than she remembered her parents; now for the first time Rey thought he looked not older but simply old.

It was a long story. There was loss and pain and horror and regret, and terrible things that couldn’t be undone. Rey remembered her old thought, that Granddad could make himself scarier than anything that might threaten her, and shivered.

But in the end there was blue fire and a son’s love. He lingered longest on that part. Rey was glad. She drank it in the way the desert drinks water, greedy and half-desperate. This was her family.

When he’d finished the story, Granddad sat very still in the center of the couch she’d made. He was obviously expecting some other reaction, because when she tried to hug him, Rey went right through him.

“Granddad!” she said, laughing more for his sake than her own. “You’re supposed to catch me!”

“Sorry,” Granddad said very softly. He shifted, turning to look at her for the first time since he’d begun the story. “Let’s try that again?”

She did, and this time Granddad let her hug him. The sensation was as warm and strange as always.

“I’m glad you’re here, Granddad,” Rey whispered.

His answer was muffled, but she heard it easily. “So am I.”

*

Three days before her ninth birthday, Granddad said he had a surprise for her.

“It will take a lot of energy,” he said, “and I may be gone for several days afterward. But I think you’ll agree it was worth it. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

For half a second, Rey considered this. But it really wasn’t a choice. No matter how much she would miss Granddad during those following days, she couldn’t pass up the chance to meet someone new.

So she told him yes, and on the morning of her ninth birthday, Granddad appeared quite suddenly in the little garage they’d cobbled together off the side of her shelter. 

There was a woman with him, holding his hand, surrounded by the same blue glow. She looked younger than Granddad; her eyes were warm and her mouth curled in a radiant smile.

Rey thought of all the stories Granddad had told her, and blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Are you an angel?”

The woman laughed, a bright ringing laugh, and a teasing glint came into her eye. “You’ve been spending far too much time with Anakin, I see,” she said with a smirk.

Granddad heaved a longsuffering sigh, and Rey had the feeling that there was some joke here that she was missing, but she didn’t mind, because Granddad and the woman were both smiling, and they were looking at her like she was the most important person in the universe.

“This is Padmé,” Granddad said, beaming down at Rey. “She’s your grandmother.”

“I’m very glad to meet you, Rey,” Padmé said. “You can call me Grandma, if you like.”

Grandma wasn’t nearly as tall as Granddad, but she still bent slightly to look Rey in the eye, and Granddad crouched down with her. Their hands never separated. Rey watched them and remembered what Granddad had said about rules. It took a lot of energy for a spirit to manifest in the world of the living, and most people couldn’t do it at all. And Granddad had said he would have to recharge sooner after this.

“I’m glad to meet you, too, Grandma,” Rey said shyly, even though the name felt strange. Grandma didn’t look any older than Rey remembered her parents being.

“Anakin says you’ve been building a speeder,” Grandma said, standing again and smiling down at Rey. “Why don’t you show me?”

Rey nodded eagerly. “It’s not quite finished,” she said, moving hurriedly to pull the protective covering away from her project. “I still have to adjust the rear stabilizer and one of the repulsors is acting up. And it needs a paint job.” She tried to shrug it off, but Grandma looked really impressed, and Rey _was_ proud of her work.

Without thinking, she reached out to grab Grandma’s free hand, remembering too late. But Granddad caught her eye and winked, and to Rey’s surprise her hand touched and held Grandma’s. She felt very much the way Granddad did: light in solid form, warm and strange and wild.

Rey grinned. “I’m going to paint it orange, I think,” she said, tugging at Grandma’s hand. “And it’s going to be the fastest speeder in the quadrant.”

Grandma laughed again and shot a look at Granddad, who looked remarkably smug. “I’m sure it will be,” she said warmly, and Rey beamed, proud and loved and wanted.

*

It _was_ a fast speeder – maybe almost too fast. Rey whooped as she went tearing off across the desert, sand kicking up in her wake, the sky an endless blue above and around her. Granddad had always said that flying felt like freedom, but she hadn’t really understood until now.

Of course, she wasn’t sure she fully knew how to slow down, but that was much less of a concern. Granddad was there, seated behind her (though Rey suspected his connection to the speeder was only tenuous at best, and probably not strictly necessary), and he was shouting just as gleefully and just as loudly as she was. She’d left BB-8 to guard the shelter, so there was no one but the endless expanse of desert to hear them.

And there, just on the edge of the horizon, a slowly growing brown haze.

Rey glanced back over her shoulder at Granddad. “Storm’s coming!” she shouted over the roar of the racing engine.

Granddad grinned, sharp and feral. “Think we can outrun it?”

Rey spun the speeder around (and if her turn was a bit too sharp and a lot too jarring, Granddad didn’t say anything) and laughed with the storm at her back. “It doesn’t stand a chance.”

*

When she was twelve years old, Rey woke one morning to blood on the sheets and a horrible ache in her abdomen.

She was bleeding. She was bleeding so _much_ and she couldn’t make it stop. Something was horribly wrong.

BB-8 was there, wheeling around her in circles, whirring and beeping a constant stream of comments that she was far too frightened to try to understand. Granddad was gone, gone back to…wherever it was he went to recharge.

She was alone and she was bleeding and it _hurt_.

“Granddad,” she whispered, choking back a sob. He’d always said he would come if she called. “Granddad, _please_.”

And then he was there, real but more transparent than she was used to seeing him. “What is it, _akku_? What’s wrong?”

Rey sniffled, hugging her arms around her stomach. “I – there’s blood, Granddad, and I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what’s wrong and I’m afraid and I don’t – ”

“It’s all right,” Granddad interrupted her gently. He didn’t touch her, but she felt a soothing warmth envelop her, smoothing the edges of her terror. “It’s all right, Rey. Just tell me what’s happened.”

So she told him.

When she was done Granddad gave her another reassuring smile. “You really are all right, Rey,” he said. “I promise. This is just part of growing up.”

Rey gaped at him. “What? But I’m – you mean I’m _supposed_ to be bleeding?”

“Yes,” said Granddad. He kept his voice low and soothing, and she could still feel that gentle warmth all around her, like a giant blanket. “Your body is changing, and that’s supposed to happen. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Did – did you bleed too, Granddad? When you were my age?”

“Well no.” He chuckled. “But my body is different than yours.”

And he told her all about the human menstrual cycle, and he showed her how to make a wrap out of rags for the blood, the way his mother used to do, and how to make a drink from some of the dried herbs in her ration packs that soothed her stomach and eased the aching feeling of queasiness that had filled her for the last three days.

His mother had been the Gan-Amu, he told her, the Grandmother of the Quarters, the wisewoman that all of the other slaves came to for advice and healing and births and deaths. Rey stared at him in surprise. It was the first time he’d ever used the word “slave” about himself or his mother.

But it also made her think of her own grandmother. Granddad said that she’d gone through this, too, and so had Rey’s mother.

“Granddad?” Rey asked, almost shyly, curling her hands around the still warm cup of fragrant tea. “Could I – do you think I could talk to Grandma?”

He was still less solid than usual, so Rey tried not to sound too hopeful. But Granddad actually grinned.

“I think we can manage that, with a bit of help.” And then he disappeared before she had a chance to ask what he meant by that.

A moment later Granddad was back, with Grandma holding his hand, and they both looked more real, more firmly present than he had just a moment ago. Granddad was laughing, still talking to someone Rey couldn’t see. “Yes, yes, all right, I owe you one, Obi-Wan. Tell Yoda it’s very important!” He actually giggled then, and he was so ridiculous that Rey laughed a bit herself, even though she didn’t fully understand what was going on.

Grandma, though, took one look at Rey, huddled up on the couch with her tea, one arm still clasped around her abdomen, and smiled. “The cramps were always the worst part, for me,” she said, moving to sit beside Rey. “I’m sorry you seem to have inherited that.”

“It’s okay,” said Rey, because even though it hurt, she kind of liked the idea that something in her was a part of Grandma.

“If you say so,” Grandma laughed, settling back into the couch and wrapping one warm, solid-light arm around Rey’s shoulders. Granddad was still holding Grandma’s other hand, sitting beside her and smiling reassuringly over at Rey. And Bebe was there too, butting up against her leg and whirring his own steady stream of comforting noises.

Rey wanted to stay there in that warmth forever.

*

There were other wrecks scattered out in the desert, more accessible now that she had her speeder. But Rey kept coming back to the downed Star Destroyer.

There was enough fuel there to power her speeder for years, maybe even decades. And there was a seemingly endless supply of salvage, and always some new part of the derelict ship to explore.

After that first trip, she always brought rope and grapples with her, because unlike Granddad she couldn’t simply appear wherever she wished to be.

It was more difficult still for BB-8, who sometimes had to be encased in netting and raised up with a pulley, and who sometimes simply stayed on the ground, whirring his disappointment. Granddad said he’d installed jet boosters in his friend Artoo for that very reason, and Bebe had gotten very excited indeed, but unfortunately Rey couldn’t install boosters she didn’t have. So most of the time he remained below, keeping watch.

Large parts of the ship were entirely inaccessible, either buried deep under treacherously shifting sand or else so contorted by the ship’s final death throes that they were completely unstable. The bridge, unfortunately, was one such area.

When she was fifteen, Rey found the officers’ quarters. She guessed they were the officers’ quarters because she’d already seen the barracks that Granddad said were for the enlisted troops, where dozens of people had slept on bunks in a single room. Rey couldn’t even imagine that many people.

Granddad said there had once been several thousand people on this ship. Rey definitely couldn’t imagine that. Now it was so big and so empty. She wondered what had happened to all those people. Had they died in the crash? Did their ghosts still wander the wreck?

But she didn’t think so. After all, she had a ghost of her own.

The officers’ quarters were very different from the barracks. They weren’t in any better shape than the barracks had been; actually, most of the rooms were far more damaged, some so badly she could only peek in from the jagged doorways. But she could tell they had once been far nicer, and some still had hints of a personal touch: the shards of a vase, its contents long decayed, or the dusty remains of holoprojectors that had once hung on walls, projecting images of family, maybe, or perhaps of military honors. She took some of those back to her shelter. A holoprojector could be very useful, after all, and they wouldn’t be too difficult to fix.

But then there was the last room.

By some trick of fate, it was less damaged than many of the others. Its door still remained in the frame, caught half between open and closed, and Rey had to squeeze herself past it. Granddad simply disappeared, then reappeared on the other side.

“Oh,” he said.

Rey had thought it was simply another set of officers’ quarters. But this room was very different from the others.

There was a large expanse of open space, dusty but otherwise empty, which told her that this room had been sparsely filled even when it was in use. And in the center of the room there was…some kind of pod. It was cracked open, the top half canted at an unnatural angle, black on the outside and stark white on the inside. Skeletal metal arms extended at intervals from the top, some ending in claws, some in needles or what looked like thin knives. One of the arms had broken off and embedded itself in the chair at the center of the pod.

“What is it, Granddad?” Rey whispered. She hadn’t thought there were other ghosts in the wreck, but something about this place made her feel cold. “Is it – is it some kind of torture chamber?”

Granddad laughed, but it wasn’t like any laugh she’d heard from him before. It was a laugh full of anger and disgust, and it was directed mostly at himself.

“You could say that,” Granddad said. He looked at Rey and sighed. “It was built for me.”

“For you!” Rey exclaimed, horrified.

“I didn’t know he’d had one installed in this ship, though,” Granddad muttered. “I wonder why.” But then suddenly his mouth twisted in a savage grin. “Did I ruin your plans, _Master_?”

Then Rey understood. She knew all about his Master the Emperor. And she remembered he’d said that Palpatine had built some kind of life support suit for him, though she’d always had difficulty picturing it in her mind. And there’d been…there’d been medical chambers, too, to keep the suit in working order.

Medical chambers, he’d called them. Rey looked again at the horrible pod and shuddered. It didn’t look anything like a medical chamber.

Granddad still looked very far away. Rey hefted her staff in her hand and decided she would do something about that.

The staff crashed down with a satisfying crunch on the nearest control panel. Though it was long dead, it sparked briefly, like an echo or a memory of functionality, and then little pieces of metal and plastic pattered on the tilted floor like small stones loosed by a sandstorm. The sound was drowned out; Rey had already struck the next panel.

She’d gone nearly halfway around the circuit of the pod’s interior when she heard Granddad’s voice. He was laughing. And it was much closer to a real laugh this time.

She stopped, panting slightly, and turned to face him with a grin.

“What are you doing, Rey?” he asked, laughing still.

Rey didn’t bother answering him. It was obvious enough what she was doing.

Granddad’s smile softened. “I appreciate the sentiment,” he said. “But there’s a lot of good material here. You could salvage it. You could make – ”

“No,” said Rey. “Not with this. I don’t ever want this to be used again.”

And she brought the staff down again in a shower of sparks.

*

Seven days before her twentieth birthday, Granddad told Rey he had good news.

“You’ll be leaving here soon, Rey,” he said, smiling warmly at her. “You’ll meet other people, and get away from the desert, and you won’t be alone anymore.”

Rey thought about this. Once, when she was younger, she might have been excited, even ecstatic. And she _was_ excited, even now. But…

“I haven’t been alone,” she said. “I’ve had you, and Bebe.”

Now Granddad looked strangely sad. “All right,” he said. “But you’ll have other living people, besides just Bebe.”

A slow sense of alarm was growing in Rey. “Granddad, are you…are you leaving? Is this you saying goodbye?”

“Do you want me to?” Granddad asked, but he wasn’t looking at her.

“No,” said Rey. “I don’t. But…you’re supposed to, aren’t you? You’ve raised me and kept me safe and now I’m grown and your job is done.” She smiled sadly. “I can take care of myself.”

“Of course you can,” said Granddad. “And you’re right, of course.” But then to her surprise he turned and winked at her. “But you know how much I hate following rules.”

Rey’s eyes widened. “You mean – ”

“I’ll always be there, if you call me,” Granddad said.

This time, when Rey moved to hug him fiercely, Granddad caught her first.


End file.
